"No," said Berkley, "I'm not drunk. You think I am. But I'm not.
And I'm too tired to tell you how I left my happy, happy home."
In the rosy gray of the dawn he sat down on the steps of his new lodgings and gazed quietly into space.
"This isn't going to help," he said. "I can stand years of it yet. And that's much too long."
He brooded for a few moments.
"I hope she doesn't write me again. I can't stand everything."
He got up with an ugly, oblique glance at the reddening sky.
"I'm what he's made me—and I've got to let her alone. . . . Let her alone. I—" He halted, laid his hand heavily on the door, standing so, motionless.
"If I—go—near her, he'll tell her what I am. If he didn't, I'd have to tell her. There's no way—anywhere—for me. And he made me so. . . . And—by God! it's in me—in me—to—to—if she writes again—" He straightened up, turned the key calmly, and let himself in.
Burgess was asleep, but Berkley went into his room and awoke him, shining a candle in his eyes.
"Burgess!"